OOTD: Setting Goals After School

Photos by Cassidy Hopkins

As long as I can remember, I've loved my to do list and planner.

It all started with those school-supplied agendas we got in elementary school. Ours always had messages about productivity to inspire us 10-year-olds to make sure we were getting as much done as possible, which, looking back, was a little weird.

I've spent years developing my personal organization system (you can skip down to the bottom if you're just here for the organization tips). I've experimented with all-paper systems (one of which required me to carry around 3 notebooks at all times) all-digital systems, and a mix of both.

As long as I've spent working on this system, I've always worked within the confines of the schedule assigned to me by my school. The benefit of being in school was that my life had built-in structures for my time. I had due dates for assignments and applications, and I always new what my next 5 steps looked like. Next quarter, I had to make sure to take the next stats section, and I needed to apply for internships by the end of the quarter.

Life post-grad is a completely different story. Sure, I receive due dates at work and I'm supposed to go to the dentist once a year, but my life is largely up to me to structure.

It's so easy to lean into this freedom, a freedom I have for the first time in 22 years. It's so easy to address problems only when they come up — to only go to the doctor when there's something wrong, only evaluate my career path when I need a new job, only think about my financial future when my bank account is running on empty.

Going with the flow and addressing problems as they come up is not by any means a wrong or bad way to live life. It simply isn't the way I choose to live. One of the most important things I realized in my 22nd year was that I have control over a number of things in my life. Making attainable long-term goals is an important way for me to exercise control over my own life.

This year, I'm experimenting with a system of setting measurable goals and less-quantifiable intentions, both short-term and long-term. I've broken my goals and intentions into 4 sections: yearly, quarterly, monthly, and weekly/daily.

Before I describe how I utilize this system, I want to explain what I mean when I say "goals" and "intentions," because I am not using these words interchangeably. Good goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. As one of my professors once put it, good goals are SMART. I like to use the word "intentions" when talking about the kind of person I want to be and the kind of daily habits I want to form. "Be healthier" is an intention, then, while "run a marathon" is a goal.

The first list I started on was my yearly list. I talk about my intentions continuously with my social support system and in therapy. This year, I want to work on not shying away from necessary confrontation and finding enjoyment in things without having to be good at them.

Going into this year, I had a couple goals for my future that I think I could realistically achieve this year. Among them are moving ahead in my career, visiting a couple friends, and setting up a health network for myself in New York.

From here, I can break down my goals into bite-size pieces to achieve throughout the year. My quarterly goals to help me on my way to moving ahead at work are to introduce a new kind of content to my platform and analyze our top-performing videos. One of my monthly goals for the month of January was to schedule appointments with a dentist and a dermatologist.

I break these goals down even further in my daily/weekly to do list. Last week, I knew I'd have some free time on Friday, so I gave myself the task of putting together a presentation outlining the kind of content I'm proposing for the reference of my team.

I'm hoping that instituting this system will help me get organized enough to be able to accomplish what I want to do in life. I'm finding it hard to set goals for myself when others aren't setting goals for me (take these classes, find a job, complete this assignment, etc). I'm nervous, but I'm also excited to spend this year and the rest of my life figuring out what I want to do and figuring out how to do it.

This top was provided by Top Tier Style. 

OOTD: What I'm Not Thankful For

I am thankful for so much. I am also pointedly not thankful for some of the things in my life.
Whenever I'm confronted with something inconvenient or difficult for me, my initial reaction is to be bitter and/or feel sorry for myself. Unfortunately, neither of those emotions help me or the situation.
It's important to acknowledge and validate my initial emotional reactions, but I don't need to give them any more power than they deserve. This is easier said than done, but it's true nonetheless.

My parents always told me that if I don't like something, instead of moping or whining about it, I should change it. Problem-solving is a useful tool to use when confronted with something that makes life more difficult, but it's not the only tool. Accepting that which you do not like is important both in situations when you can make a change and when you can't. 

When you can change what you don't like in your life, acceptance is the first step to acknowledging something is off in your life. From there, you can truly address the problem head-on.
When you can't change what you don't like in your life or the changes you can make are slow to take effect, acceptance can help you go through life without being bogged down.

When my therapist first started talking to me about acceptance, I had a hard time accepting (lol) this as a method for dealing with things that make my life harder. For one, it sounds like it means you have to invalidate your emotions. For another, it sounds a lot like giving up.
True acceptance is neither invalidating nor giving up. Society often preaches ignorance disguised as acceptance, but that is not true acceptance. True acceptance does not mean ignoring your feelings or the problem. It means openly acknowledging and validating your feelings, being honest about the problem, and accepting the reality of the situation. From there, you can start to live without being weighed down by the misery of a problem you can neither solve nor, in your mind, live with.

This was supposed to be my Thanksgiving week post. The Monday before Thanksgiving, however, I was put into a really difficult situation with the lease on my apartment. What it boiled down to was that I would need to move out the week of December 1st, a full month before I was expecting to have to move out. I'd been leisurely looking for roommates and apartments under the impression that I had until the end of my lease at the end of December, but I hadn't even so much as arranged to meet anyone or see anything yet. I felt scared, angry, and hopeless at the prospect of having to move out in 12 days without anywhere to go.

Luckily, this was a difficult situation I could change. I could (and did) look at a number of apartments before the real estate offices closed for Thanksgiving. I could (and did) arrange a fall-back option if I couldn't find a place to sign a lease. But before I could do any of those things, I had to stop wasting all my energy by thinking about how I didn't want to leave my apartment, how I wasn't ready to look for places, that I was scared I wouldn't have enough time to find the right place or the right roommates, that I was angry I had to do any of this in the first place. I had to accept the situation I was in so I had the energy and mindset to be able to find myself (and Luxe) a place to live. Even though I didn't want to, I had to move, and I had to move soon. Accepting that made it so much easier for me to look for a place in a time crunch and start packing up to move with so little time.

Acceptance is a tool I'm still working on. However, it's something I feel content to put the energy into, because it's a tool that really helps me so often.

This belt was provided by Top Tier Style. If you would like to purchase your own, use the coupon code BLOG15 for 15% OFF everything on their store!

OOTD: 23

Photography by Cassidy Hopkins

I celebrated my 23rd birthday last Friday. Another year of my life marked, another sappy post contemplating the meaning of life and my time on Earth.

*Trigger warning: suicide, depression, and themes of mental illness*

This was the year I realized how long life is. A strange side effect of being suicidal, for however long, is that you develop tunnel vision when it comes to thinking about the future. Except there's no light at the end of the tunnel, so you're left unable to see, fumbling around in the darkness, only able to perceive the immediate steps you're about to take.

When you unwillingly spend your time and energy desperately wishing for your life to be over, it becomes impossible to truly conceptualize your future. You may not realize it, but you don't think you have a future. Your brain simply can't comprehend how to think about something so impossible.

I've always thought I'm good at planning for my future. So far, I've completed some pretty significant parts of my life plan: I've studied in Spain, attended a private university, and moved to New York. Without my realizing it, though, I'd slipped into accepting that my life would be cut short.

I'd think a couple months, maybe a couple years into the future, but the best I could do was have kinda fuzzy ideas about what my long-term future looked like (I like to write, right? People retire, right? Dogs?).

In all honesty, the experience of being unable to think into the future isn't uncommon in people my age. In the process of developing a sense of self, many teens and young adults unconsciously come to perceive themselves as invincible. They simply cannot conceptualize their future, because their concept of self has not evolved past the present.

My fuzzy concept of the future was a combo of both depressive symptoms and age. Since being hospitalized 2 years ago and subsequently attending intensive therapy, I've turned the corner and committed myself to not acting on my suicidal urges. That, as well as simply growing older, has left me struck with just how LONG life is. 

I could own several dogs! I could live in so many cities! I could have several different career paths! I could go back to school! I could reach a point in my life where I want to work out! Suddenly, 23 doesn't feel so weighty. 

I've also started taking care of myself little by little. I've been adding veggies to my diet and cutting back on meals consisting simply of candy. I've started saving money not because that's what my parents have always told me to do, but because I'd like to have money to travel and to retire. I go to the doctor for preventative care instead of just to take care of immediate ailments.

Without even realizing it, I've committed to sticking around. I didn't even realize I wasn't committed until my treatment regimen pushed me to truly conceptualize a future. I'm another year older, and truly thrilled to live out my future and continue to work towards it.

On the note of living out my future, I'm already planning all the ways I can wear this floral romper soon — it's definitely coming down to Arizona with me next month. The piece was provided by Top Tier Style. If you would like to purchase your own, use the coupon code BLOG15 for 15% OFF everything on their store!

Halloween 2017: Coraline and The Cat

Another Halloween, another hair color to take advantage of when deciding upon a costume. I started crowdsourcing blue-haired characters and costume ideas in August. I had 2 requirements in addition to the incorporation of the blue hair color: it had to have a position for my pup and it had to be DIY-able.

People gave me all sorts of ideas: Joy from "Inside Out" (one of my favorite movies), Hades from "Hercules", outer space, the ocean, etc. I thought about going as Helena St. Tessero from "Neo Yokio" because, not only do we both have blue hair, but we're both fashion bloggers who've lost interest and faith in the fashion industry. But I chose Coraline because the costume was the easiest to make for both me and my dog.

I've been DIY-ing my costumes since I was little (well, my mom was doing all the work before my fine motor movements fully developed, but everything was still homemade). I'm on a fixed budget and never want to ruin it by spending money on something I'm only going to wear once for a photo. Plus, I don't ever go out on Halloween, so the costume would literally only be purchased for the photo.

This costume was super easy because I already owned the pointy-toed blue boots and dark-wash jeans. All I needed was a star-print sweater and a dragonfly clip. I thought about buying them, but I knew I wouldn't ever wear the sweater or the clip again, and decided I'd rather spend the money on new books.

I made the sweater by cutting out stars from a huge swath of white fabric I have that I use for embroidery and tacking them onto a fuzzy sweater I already owned. I made the clip by painting a dragonfly onto the same fabric and gluing it on a bobby pin.

And voilá! A "Coraline" Halloween! I think my pup was the happiest with this costume because it didn't require her to wear socks or a jacket like she's had to wear in previous years' costumes.

OOTD: Transparency

Photography by Cassidy Hopkins

We all do embarrassing shit. We all do stuff we think others wouldn't approve of. We've all used our roommate's shampoo, kissed a friend's ex, or written a strongly-worded and not factually-sourced tweet about a current event we're not actually familiar with. When we realize what we've done or realize the likelihood of someone finding out, we're stricken with shame.

If you've made it far enough in life to be able to read this (and even if you haven't tbh), you are likely very intimate with shame. It's the feeling that accompanies not fitting into your environment and perceived failure. I say "perceived" failure because people often feel ashamed of life experiences that others wouldn't consider negative. You think there's something wrong with you, that you can't get anything right, and that others see you this way as well. You get that pit in your stomach and just want to disappear from sight.

A common response to shame is to vow to not reveal one's misstep to anyone. You've just done something wrong, something you may have even known was wrong. If our actions speak louder than words, doesn't doing something someone might consider wrong make you a little big wrong?

I've written about how talking about the not-so-perfect aspects of life on social media can contribute to an honest and positive social media environment. Now, I'm advocating that your honesty doesn't need to be blasted onto the internet for all the world to see for it to benefit the world. Being vulnerable and admitting your faults and missteps to a couple people will make you feel better.

I know, I know: One of the immediate symptoms of shame is to want to conceal your perceived shameful behavior from everyone. Hear me out. If you're experiencing shame without having your shameful behavior actually exposed to the world, you're feeling embarrassed in anticipation of what others might say. Just because you feel like you need to crawl into a hole doesn't mean that others think you should.

If you don't know how others are going to react — and you don't know unless they're actually reacting — there's often no point in trying to imagine. You can work with yourself to change how you perceive this failure. Telling others about your perceived failure can actually help you receive the validation and empathy you need in that situation. It can also lift the giant burden that accompanies keeping a shameful secret. Now, the experience gets to just be a human experience instead of a gross one.

To demonstrate the power of transparency when one is experiencing shame, I'm going to share a shameful secret of my own. I only shower once a week. Not wash my hair once a week, shower once a week. Everyone I know showers a couple times a week. Some people shower every day. I've met people who often shower twice a day. I know that once a week is not very often to shower, and I'm very ashamed of my showering habits. At the same time, this habit doesn't affect me negatively enough for me to divert any energy away from the more important things I'm working on to change it. I recently started telling people about this shameful habit of mine when it comes up in conversation. Instead of lying about why my hair looks nice and shiny on day 5, I answer honestly when someone asks: I haven't showered in 5 days. I don't even justify it with a lie about how often I use dry shampoo. I'm just honest.

And guess what: I'm still here, feeling better than ever! Most of the time, people move on pretty quickly, and I realize that this thing I've been feeling gross over for years isn't actually a big deal. Sometimes people even empathize, which makes me feel even better. Honestly, sometimes people express disgust. Maybe one day I'll shower more often, but it won't be because a couple people have told me my shower schedule doesn't match theirs.

So, you see, transparency can make your life better. Just like this transparent bodysuit has made my life better (I feel so sparkly and fun!). Except, unlike this item of clothing, honesty will never go out of style.

What do you do when you're experiencing shame? If you've tried honesty (either in certain situations or as a policy), how has it affected your life? Let me know in the comments below!